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Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

nytimes.com

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Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#221

Post by samstave »

scarygliders wrote: post #128

Can we just get something straight about the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant? Although it was a 1960's design, the reason it failed the way it did was because of one design flaw... Its backup generators were not placed up on the hills above it. Rather, the backup generators were situated below sea level underneath the reactor buildings. DERP. Fukushima Dai-ichi survived the Magnitude 9 earthquake. It did not s…

So what is your take on what seems to be the complete and utter failure for the cleanup and dealing with the aftermath?

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#222

Post by eigenvector »

BurningFrog wrote: post #217
wiggler00m wrote: post #207

Renewable energy is cheaper than nuclear, or will be imminently. Proponents of nuclear tend to ignore the long-run costs associated with nuclear (eg. waste transport and storage), and the potential for cost blowouts due to acute disasters like Fukushima (estimated cost to taxpayers: USD $100 Billion). The fact tax money is going towards Fukushima highlights another problem with nuclear power: the agency problem. The…

> Renewable energy is cheaper than nuclear, or will be imminently. Renewable energy at that scale is still theoretical and hasn't shown its downsides yet. Nuclear has shown all its downsides, and they have been 95% corrected. It's a mature, known technology.

In 2018, renewables provided 713 TWh of energy to the US electricity grid. Nuclear provided 807 TWh. They're already at the same scale, and renewables are rapidly increasing while nuclear has stagnated for decades.

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#223

Post by BurningFrog »

hesk wrote: post #46
cm2187 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much because Merkel decided so in the days following Fukushima. Not exactly the result of long term strategy.

That's too simplistic. Retiring nuclear power plants has been the long term goal of the German anti-nuclear movement since the 70s. They were an important faction in the founding of the Green Party. When the Green party came into power in 1998 in a coalition government, they passed a law to retire all nuclear power plants by restricting the remaining energy output they could produce. BTW, this was done in consensus w…

> Then Fukushima happened, [...], and Andrea Merkel changed her opinion.

Didn't you say the same as OP, with a lot more words?

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#224

Post by eigenvector »

istjohn wrote: post #22
addicted wrote: post #15

Nuclear power can save the world.... If the US can build reactors at 1/10th the cost they do right now. That’s the solution. Not the much cheaper clean energy sources that already exist and are being built out in record numbers... Nuclear is great. It just loses out because it’s too expensive and worse, it gets more expensive with time. If the reasoning behind that is based on irrational human fears then first propos…

FTA: New nuclear power plants are hugely expensive to build in the United States today. This is why so few are being built. But they don’t need to be so costly. The key to recovering our lost ability to build affordable nuclear plants is standardization and repetition. ... Currently, as M.I.T.’s Richard Lester, a nuclear engineer, has written, a company proposing a new reactor design faces “the prospect of having to…

So in other words, nuclear is the faster way to slash GHG emissions... if you can reform the US nuclear regulatory regime. And how long do you suppose that will take to push through Congress?

In the meantime, we can put out an RFP for a new wind project today and have it online in a year.

Something that depends on hypothetical political developments in a country that shuts down its government because of political gridlock a couple of times a year cannot reasonably be described as the fastest way to do anything.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#226

Post by roenxi »

ilitirit wrote: post #194
leetcrew wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

coal is arguably worse even when it's working as designed. it's just amortized over a much larger area.

Anything is "arguably" worse or better. But honestly, I would challenge that point any day. As much as I'm against fossil fuels, coal powered plants only contribute a very minor part to global warming compared to lets say... ships, planes and cars. And my point is not about coal specifically - it was just mentioned because that's what the main opposition is to nuclear. Not solar/wind/water. My point is that failure o…

> My point is that failure of nuclear energy provision is demonstrably worse than the failure of any other options we've tried.

No it isn't; when dams fail villages get swept away and everyone dies. Bad mining disasters can wipe out ~50 people too.

When Fukushima failed, basically nobody got hurt, and there is a lot of inconvenience and resources have to go to cleaning the thing up.

Obviously it is still awful for the people involved, but I'd personally rather go through a nuclear accident than a dam failure or have a mine fall on me, because I'd still be basically ok after a nuclear accident. The argument might be that it is uneconomic after accounting for the costs, but it is demonstrably safe and so a far better failure mode than anything else we've tried.

I mean, Fukushima has basically proven that the only question is economic cost/benefit.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#227

Post by samstave »

Serious question I have thought about previously:

Why is there not a singular global body that includes all nations to build out, manage and secure ALL nuclear power plants. Basically a single body, comprised of all the top minds and efforts of every nation's nuclear SMEs - which will create a grid of nuclear power all over the world and every country contributes based on their draw from the system?

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#228

Post by furgooswft13 »

ilitirit wrote: post #187
scarygliders wrote: post #128

Can we just get something straight about the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant? Although it was a 1960's design, the reason it failed the way it did was because of one design flaw... Its backup generators were not placed up on the hills above it. Rather, the backup generators were situated below sea level underneath the reactor buildings. DERP. Fukushima Dai-ichi survived the Magnitude 9 earthquake. It did not s…

> My point is that nuclear power is safe, as long as all disaster scenarios are taken into account To be honest, you could probably make that argument for anything under question in any scenario. But even if we were to skip the logical loopholes ("We took it into account, but we decided the benefits outweighed the costs because of "), let's just look at the raw numbers or simply just historical facts. Have any disast…

> Have any disasters at coal plants rendered areas uninhabitable for centuries?

Not a coal plant per se, but there's the Centralia mine fire [1] in PA, which is expected to burn for over 250 years, resulting in the entire town being abandoned.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#229

Post by kenneth »

davrosthedalek wrote: post #147
scarygliders wrote: post #128

Can we just get something straight about the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant? Although it was a 1960's design, the reason it failed the way it did was because of one design flaw... Its backup generators were not placed up on the hills above it. Rather, the backup generators were situated below sea level underneath the reactor buildings. DERP. Fukushima Dai-ichi survived the Magnitude 9 earthquake. It did not s…

The problem is that "taking all disaster scenarios into account" is easy in hindsight, but maybe not in planning. But I believe that modern nuclear power reactors can be build intrinsically safe. For me, the real problem begins with the treatment of the waste: It's hard to find a good place to store it or reprocess it. Not so much because finding the actual place is hard, but because using that place will face hard o…

I'm not so sure I'd pick Democracy over nuclear power. Recent years have made me question our idea of the absolute superiority of Democracy. Look at the clusterfuck that is the US "democracy" vs the success of Singapore or even China. The rest of the Western world in Europe is barely better off than the US.

On the other hand, not getting nuclear power deployed ASAP everywhere essentially means the long term destruction of our planet.

So all in all, I don't think it's nearly as clear cut a decision on nuclear vs. democracy, and if forced to choose I may pick the former.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#230

Post by corysama »

ilitirit wrote: post #194
leetcrew wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

coal is arguably worse even when it's working as designed. it's just amortized over a much larger area.

Anything is "arguably" worse or better. But honestly, I would challenge that point any day. As much as I'm against fossil fuels, coal powered plants only contribute a very minor part to global warming compared to lets say... ships, planes and cars. And my point is not about coal specifically - it was just mentioned because that's what the main opposition is to nuclear. Not solar/wind/water. My point is that failure o…

From what I understand, far more people have been radiated to a far larger degree by coal plants operating as designed than by nuke plants in disasters. It’s just not as obvious and doesn’t make for a good breaking-emergency headline.
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